how i organize my cabinets...

so, i'm not sure if you care (or know), but i'm a pretty big nerd. especially when it comes to organization. i LOVE to organize things (notice i said organize them, not keep them organized, which is a whole other issue...). since we live in such a tiny space, i find it absolutely necessary to attempt to keep things organized. one thing that has constantly been a challenge is our kitchen cabinets. see, we don't have a whole lot of them, and we were blessed with very generous wedding guests who gave us pretty much everything on our registry, which is AWESOME! and will be even more awesome some day when we have the space for it. but for now, we have to fit all that and at least a little food in our small space. some of the shelves (ok, like half!) are out of my direct reach and require a stool to get to them (or some sweet talking to my love, if he's home to help my height deficiency). 

about a year ago, i cleaned out our cabinets and was shocked how many i had of certain food items- mostly due to the fact that i couldnt see/reach, so when i couldn't find something, i assumed we were out and bought more. i decided this had to stop, so i created an inventory system to keep up. now, i know it looks like chaos, but i promise, its organized! i know exactly what is in the cabinet & where- now this first picture is the cabinet above our fridge, and is entirely food storage, as in dry goods that i don't need frequently

so you can understand how it would be easy for me to buy, say, another bag of chocolate chips. i mean, do you see them anywhere in there? would you believe there are SEVERAL bags of them? yeah, there are! so, i started doing this:

yep, a good old fashioned hand written (in sharpie of course) list of what is in the cabinet. and, for handy-dandyness, this list is posted in one of my lower cabinets, between my sink & oven. that way, i can whip it open, take a glance, and then decide if i need the stool or not. here's the cabinet it lives in...spices on the bottom, baking goods in the middle, more often needed dry stuff on top (thats quinoa, oatmeal, sunflower seeds, almonds, and muffing mix)

so there you go. a peak inside our smallish kitchen. i think you can do a lot with a little. and i think its cool the things you can figure out (like inventory systems) when you need to! someday, when we have our own kitchen, i want to paint the inside of the cabinets with chalkboard paint. i have a cool picture on pinterest that i can't get to right now, but i'll post it later.

maybe someday. but for now, sharpies & printer paper work just fine.

what about you? any tips or successful practices in your kitchen cabinets? i'd love to hear!!

lion!

the night was finally here. after chatting about it at work, nathan and i decided that we would spend this evening downloading and test driving the new OS for our macbook pro. we have both been looking forward to it, and when we saw it came out a little while ago, we looked forward to checking it out in the comfort of our own home on our own computer. ok so its true, in case you didn't know, we are both pretty big tech-nerds. we like to watch apple's press conferences together (well, each at our respective offices, chatting, while following typically the engadget liveblog coverage of the events). we send each other news stories about whatever new is going on (mostly with apple) and geek out in the apple store. in addition to our macbook, nathan's had an iphone, we've had several ipods between the two of us, and we've had both ipads (we had the 1st one, then sold it to buy the new 2nd one). so yeah, we're tech-nerds. i guess apple fanatics is a better term. but still.

while i was waiting for nathan to get home from work so we could apple-out together, i decided to make us a little homemade pizza, tex-mex style. let me just say, i'm a legit pizza maker. i mean, for-reals. from scratch is the only way i roll (ok, not true, sometimes we eat frozen or mellow mushroom), so i got out the yeast & the cookbook and started kneading. i meant to take pictures of the process, but before i knew it, i was kneading and there sat my camera next to me, no pictures taken. pretty much, i just follow the recipe in my better homes cookbook, using the whole wheat recipe. 

for tonight's enjoyment, i went tex-mex on it. after baking the dough for about 10 minutes, i brushed on some olive oil, covered it in slightly smashed black beans, then topped it with some spicy, drained rotel (on nathan's side) and a can of diced jalapeños (on both sides). to that, i added some freshly sautéed chicken, peppers, and onion- yum! and finally, topped it all with a bunch of mexican-style cheese mix. i popped that baby in the oven for about 10 minutes, and then we were ready to feast! after slicing, i added some sour cream to nathan's half.

with our bellies full, it was time to move on to the good stuff- lion had finished downloading! it was time to install!

its blurry, but the cute little lion tracked our progress, and made us more and more anxious for it to be complete!

the whole download & install process took us, well, right about an hour. not too bad. we have pretty fast internet, which allowed the download to be complete in around 15 minutes, and then a few minutes to restart, followed by about 35 minutes to install. pretty simple stuff.

and oh by the way, did you know that lion was offered as an app in the new macbook appstore? as in, we didn't have to go to the store, order anything, or track any shipments (which i not-so-secretly love to do!). we just clicked on the appstore, clicked on lion, and were on our way.

after getting it all ready, it was time to explore. oh look, new start screen-

and that wasn't the only new thing. here's some screen shots for ya:

new scrolling took some getting use to, but i almost have the hang of it. i still go the opposite direction every time at first, but it is more natural 

new launchpad feature- accessed by either clicking the icon in the dock or hitting the hot corner, this mimics an iphone/itouch/ipad screen. all your applications show up as apps, and you click on them just as you would a phone. pretty nifty. i like the blur effect on your background- kind of reminds you that you are not on your desktop

i appreciate that it tells me my name now. not real sure why, but it does. after clicking on it, i realized it was the user location- so, if there were any other users on this computer, they would show up in the drop down menu

mission control they call it- a great way to swim through the clutter and find the page/app/whatev you need to get to without having to click everything (inevitably twice)

more mission control

so what's my take on it?
all in all, i like it so far. mission control & launchpad are pretty sweet. the scrolling is also pretty fantastic, although it will take some getting used to.  maybe my favorite feature? full screen apps. meaning, no file bars or anything like that- just corner to corner pixaly-goodness. pretty sweet. everything looks a little cleaner & sharper, and i like that too.
down sides? biggest one, and honestly kind of frustrating, is that, apparently, i was running some old school microsoft office suite, and as soon as the restart finished after installing lion, a nice little pop-up came up saying that the office software was no longer compatible. boo. so now i have no word or office.  other than that, can't complain! we really like it, and we enjoyed geekaly-exploring it together.
check it out- if you've got a macbook, its definitely worth $30- much cheaper than any previous OS updates. i recommend it.
now, if only that iphone 5 would come out.....

quinoa!

the other night, i made nathan some quinoa for the week. ever made it? its pretty simple and super healthy! we just got into the quinoa craze, and have found it to be a great addition to our repertoire. i have tried out a few different recipes, and been totally satisfied with all of them! one of my favorite ways to cook it is using my favorite brown rice recipe, but subbing in quinoa instead of rice (see that recipe below).

so what is quinoa??  well, good question. according to wikipedia (which has the answer to everything), quinoa is a type of goosefoot, and "is a grain-like crop grown primarily for its edible seeds. It is a pseudocereal rather than a true cereal, or grain, as it is not a member of the grass family. As a chenopod, quinoa is closely related to species such as beets, spinach, and tumbleweeds." so what does that mean? not really sure, but we think its good. one of the biggest things we like and appreciate about it is that it is very high in protein and pretty good for you. one serving has about 14g of protein! pretty cool, huh? its also very versatile, you can sub it for oatmeal in the morning and mix in a little sugar and maybe cinnamon and fruit for a tasty breakfast, or mix it with savory ingredients for a powerful side and potentially even main dish.  

so, because of all this, nathan asked me to cook him up some for the week to take to work. i made it plain so he could choose each day what he wanted to do with it. one side note here, we ordered our quinoa from nutsonline.com, a great website which i'll blog about later. its pretty expensive and hard to find in our grocery stores, and even at the farmers market, so when i saw it on their website for such a great price, we ordered several pounds.

so, i decided to make 2 cups of quinoa to start out with. after doing some research, i found that most folks suggested a 1:1.25 ratio to cook the quinoa (1 part quinoa to 1.25 parts liquid). some suggested as much as 1:2, so i decided to go in the middle. i made 2 cups of quinoa, so i put in 3 cups of water. i mixed this in my awesome le creuset  5 1/2 quart round french oven on my stove top, and brought it to a simmer. 

yay for le creuset!

once simmering, i reduced the heat and allowed it to cook for almost 30 minutes, keeping an eye on it and stirring it to keep it from burning.

side note here, check out my new tea kettle! i'm a little obsessed with le creuset these days, and my mom is so good to me, surprising me with new pieces occasionally.

once the quinoa was finished (and you can tell because all the liquid is dried up and it looks almost like rice does when it is finished, and also kind of like fish eggs), i divided it out into some glad containers. i measured out 1 cup servings and stacked them up in our fridge so nathan could grab and go each morning. he said this worked out great! he just seasons it before he leaves (like friday, he added a splash of EVOO, some dried basil, and salt and pepper), and heats it up and eats it at work. yum!

 

so there ya go. quinoa. good stuff. here's the two recipes for you:

basic quinoa recipe:

2 cups quinoa

1 1/4 cups water

combine in saucepan and bring to simmer. once boiling, reduce heat and continue to cook for 25-30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

season according to your preference.

brown rice quinoa recipe:

1 cup quinoa

1 can beef consomme 

1 can french onion soup

1 jar mushrooms

1 stick butter

dump all in a baking dish, and bake at 350 for about an hour.

enjoy :)

have you heard about ebates?

so its friday and while i have a few other posts in the works, i thought i would share a quick tip i learned abotu that is pretty cool! have you ever heard of ebates? alright so its pretty cool if you havent. so i've become somewhat of an online shopper. while i love to go in stores and browse, often, i don't want to spend my time going to the store for things like say toilet paper, or a gift off of a registry. at christmas, the malls are crazy and so i'd rather do at least a lot of my shopping online. so right after christmas last year, i stumbled upon this site and i was like "yes!"

so how it works is you visit this site first, and follow their links to all the different online shopping stores. it keeps a "ticket" of where you are and how much you spend, and then you get a percentage back. every 3 months, they cut you a check, and thats all you have to do! the only personal info you give them is your mailing address (or your paypal account name). how awesome is that?!

they have all kinds of stores on there, too... from hotels.com, target, macys, barnes and noble, clinique, old navy, under armour- the list is huge! so you go on, start an account (and right now, they are giving away a bonus when you open an account) and then search for you store. when you pull up the listing for the store on ebates, not only will you see the link to follow and the amount of cash back you will recieve, but they also post coupon codes for discounts or free shipping- how cool?!

so check it out- the key is to remember to use it when you order things (i'll admit, i still forget). and even if it doesn't seem like much, it's like an extra coupon! between april 1-june 30, i earned $73! every little bit helps, and if you're going to buy something anyways, at least earn something for it!

my planner

so i keep a well detailed planner. i did all through college, and even though i'm not nearly as busy now, i still do. its funny, i'm not always the neatest person, like say when it comes to laundry, and i'm a mess in the kitchen, but there are some things i keep completely organized- like my email inbox. and my planner. in college, it was actually color coded by category. i only use certain pens in my planner- generally, when i get a new planner, i get a new pen and that is all i use. i'll put a sticky note in my planner before i write in it in the "wrong" pen. i use 1-2 clean mark through lines when i have done something, and scribble out in zigzags things that get canceled. i find that by the end of the year, my planner becomes a sort of journal- mostly because, i write everything down. if its not in my planner, chances are, its not going to happen. some weeks have more written down than others. often, i stick in grocery lists, menus, etc. sometimes, when i'm feeling overwhelmed because i have a lot to do, i flip back through all the weeks before to see all the things i have accomplished, all the things that are marked out. i really like that.

when looking for a planner, i am pretty picky. i like plenty of space for each day to write things out. i dont like times listed. i like for the planner to have a full month or year view to write in quick notes like vacations. it has to feel good to- this one, the pages are crisp and yet it bends easily. i like to identify where i am in the planner somehow- in my last planner, i used a paper clip. this one, the bottom right corner tears off so all the ones are torn up to where i am. i also appreciate notes pages- in this one, i have a list of all the magazines we are currently subscribed to. typically, i go for an academic calendar over a true 12 month calendar-  i haven't been able to make the switch since being in college, and i find that academic planners seem to suit my fancy. also, they tend to come in pink :)

here's some pictures for you to get a visual of what i mean...



the planner, with this year's pen...a uni 0.7 blue ink jetstream. it writes very nicely.

this week in my calendar- it's a pretty light week so far



here's the overview calendar at the beginning- highlighted days have to do with my PTO at work





a good busy week a while back- see all i accomplished!

recently, i added a small notepad to my planner to keep up with different lists that i always want to be able to get to- like restaurants we want to check out, ideas for our basement, and a dream list for our future home. this has been a good way for me to keep a log so that i don't forget. now, i don't have a smart phone yet so its hard to truly say, but i think i will always prefer paper & ink over technology. theres just something about the satisfaction of crossing through things when they have been accomplished, and of make a neat & tidy check list in my own handwriting. here's a few samples from the notepad (labeled "ideas")

this was some planning we did for our lifegroup (sunday school class)



so there you have it friends, a peek inside my planner life.

update on my five fingers!

so i ran in them...and it was great! now mind you, i do most (ok, really at this point ALL) training on a treadmill in my mom's room in front of the tv (while usually watching duggars or dc cupcakes, or, when it is in season, the biggest loser). so anyways, i run on a treadmill. but they were great! i actually ran my fastest mile ever in them....7:27! that was a big deal and i was quite proud. i took them off after the first mile because i am going to ease myself into them (per recommendation of vibram's website). i really enjoyed running in them- after i got over the initial first few awkward strides. i can't wait to run outside in them. the one thing they really made me notice was how much i slam my heels down when i run- need to work on correcting that. after changing out of them after the first mile, i went on to run my fasted 5k ever- 23:50! proud moment :)

so yeah, i recommend them for sure!

five fingers!

so this weekend, on our way up to rome to visit nathan's sisters, we stopped by abbadabba's (a shoe store in little 5 points) to try on some shoes. i'm not sure if you've heard/seen/tried the new craze of "five fingers" shoes, but after several members of my family got some, we decided to give them a shot- and we loved them!

abbadabbas has a HUGE selection of shoes- especially the outdoorsy, granola type. after skimming the chacos and keens and birkenstocks, we found the display of five fingers (made by vibram). they had a ton! assorted colors and styles entertained us while we searched for pairs that we liked. nathan had been doing some online research and thought he wanted the "classic" fit in a green color, but we both decided to try on a few different styles. first, i tried on some pretty cute pink ones, but we both decided the color was to particular to match my wardrobe. nathan tried on the pair he found online, and loved them- he was pretty sure those were the ones he wanted (they don't have a strap- i'll have to take a picture later to post on here), and after trying on a pair with a strap, he went with his original choice. they look really cool!

i ended up picking out this pair:

the kind i got are the "SPRINT"

and i really like them! we wore them around saturday, and then when we went to the lake with some friends, we wore them around out there too. they are actually surprisingly comfortable, and great because it feels like you are barefoot but you don't get your feet nasty. i'm going to try to run in them today- nathan worked out in his yesterday and said it was awesome. here's some more pics if you haven't seen them before

it's kind of cool- your toes get like trained to go in them. the first time, it took like 5 minutes to put them on, but now, my toes know just where to go!

vibram's website explains how they work here: "Our revolutionary design makes feet healthier by allowing them to move more naturally and freely. The typical human foot is an anatomical marvel of evolution with 26 bones, 33 joints, 20 muscles and hundreds of sensory receptors, tendons and ligaments. Like the rest of the body, to keep our feet healthy, they need to be stimulated and exercised."

check out their selection online, and if you really like them, head to abbadabbas or rei (thats where my folks got theirs). i'll update this post after my run today!

a visit to new moms (& dads!)

so, several of our friends in our lifegroup (aka, sunday school class) have had or are having babies, and i came across the article. i think everyone could learn a few lessons in how to be a help & a blessing (and not a hindrance & a bother). check out this article (from another blog) and take note!

http://avital.blogspot.com/2011/03/how-to-be-best-post-partum-visitor-in.html#axzz1MHOWYmXm